The 29th Olympiad

Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Too much blood—and ink—has been spilled since protests erupted in Lhasa less than a month ago. The Tibet issue has been used as a proxy by the Left and the Right in both China and the West to serve the aims of each disparate faction. Now it seems as though no group is willing to brook a narrative that deviates from its oft-repeated truisms:

Western Left: the Tibetans are peaceful, god-loving people who are being brutally oppressed by an authoritarian regime.
Western Right: the West must expose the human rights violations in China and the threat these violations (and a rising China) pose to the West and world stability.
Chinese Left: the Tibetans should be thanking China for eradicating the feudal slave society that existed, not attacking their Han brothers.
Chinese Right: the “splittists” led by the Dalai Clique need to be forcefully suppressed for undermining harmony in the Motherland.

I do not wish to write another article pointing out the inconsistencies and logical flaws in each of the narratives, nor do I wish the moralize about what the West should do. (I’ve tried to address some of these issues in a previous post) Rather, I want to point out that the recent protests are an effect, not a cause.

Ever since communism lost its resonance in China, economic development and nationalism have been the twin pillars keeping the Party in power. In its most strident form, nationalism is manifest in street protests and rallies. Yet because ardent nationalist outbursts can quickly spiral out of control and scare outside observers, the Party has sought to emphasize China’s “peaceful rise” in recent years. The ostensibly apolitical Olympics made it a perfect vessel to enhance Chinese national pride as it rises peacefully.

The propaganda campaign for the Olympics is on a scale that has not been seen in China since the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, walking down the street in Beijing obliterates any notion that it was the West that politicized the Olympic Games. Nearly every street in the capital boasts a banner welcoming the Olympics, a newspaper running a feature on the Olympics, a clock counting down to the Olympics, or a sign imploring citizens to prepare for the Olympics. Some of the best scientists in the country are genetically engineering flowers to bloom in August. The Party has wed its nationalist credential to its staging of the best Olympic Games the world has ever seen.

Thus, the Chinese government caused the politicization of the Olympics. The pride the Chinese feel about hosting the Games is, at its core, genuine—but this pride was artificially inflated to an extreme by a constant barrage of propaganda. Australians and Greeks took pride in hosting the Olympics, but the governments in those nations did not conflate their domestic appeal, grip on power, and nationalistic credential on hosting the Olympics. Since the Party twisted the Games for its own political ends, it seems only natural that those who oppose the regime and its actions—regardless of the merit of the attacks—will use the Olympics as a opportunity to make their voices heard.

© 2008 The Hypermodern.